Return to Me
by doctoruth
Summary: Revised to include the previously titled short pieces 'Maybe' and 'Three, Six, Five, Tell Me Your Days' with an opening piece, 'Somersaults'.
1. Somersaults

I felt the sounds you were making in my belly before I knew what they were. They reminded me of the scratch of bullrushes rubbing together in the wind, but they also made me feel like I was turning sloppy somersaults on a trampoline, too. When the sound and the flipping-over feeling came together I realized you were being sick.

I felt dizzy and like someone was tickling the back of my neck, and I even looked around, thinking maybe there was someone else there with us in the bathroom. I hate the sound. I hate it most when it's you. It felt like deja vu to hear you, like maybe you've been doing it a lot recently, and I was only just finding out. I didn't leave, though. I called out for you, knowing you wouldn't answer, and tried the closed door of the stall.

As I pushed the door the little silver bar on your side made a clang as it knocked against its cage. _Santana?_ My voice sounded like a crushed paper bag, like it wouldn't come back in the same shape it was before. I stayed so still, the sound of the lock banging and my rough voice already too much, already more noise than you could stand.

I think you said my name but now I wonder if maybe you were just letting breath escape after the effort of being sick.

I waited the longest time. I waited so still and didn't look away from the spot on the stall door where the lock is. I waited until I saw creeping things to the sides of me and pinpricks pushing over my vision.

When you let me in I couldn't stop my body reaching for yours even though I was scared you were going to push me away. The smudges under your eyes and the pinching of your pupils and the band of shining skin by your hairline. The shiver in your hands. The creases in your Cheerios skirt.

You looked like you had pinched out a candle flame and you desperately wanted it to come back to life.

Do you know? I'd do anything to light a match for you.


	2. Three, Six, Five, Tell Me Your Days

**Leaves**

You hate the cold, but you hate September even more than you hate winter. I think maybe it's because you don't like things passing and you can't stand the summer leaving.

Why is it worse this year? Everything is making you restless, like you're running your hands under freezing water and can't wait to take them out.

Every thing you say now is _I want_ and _I have to_ and _I need_. Sometimes I think you've forgotten how I fit into your sentences.

I start running so I can think about you and nothing else. I get up before dawn so I can crush new leaves before anyone else steps on them. I run around Lima. I run swallowing the dark down in big gulps. I run till I feel like the fog is inside me, behind my eyes as well as in front of them. I keep ending up at your house, even though I am trying to run in a straight line and not in loops passing by you again and again.

When my feet touch the pavement I hear you singing. You're singing things broken into pieces and all tied up together; you're singing songs you don't sing for anyone but me.

My eyes sting and I am salty all over my skin and all the heat I feel inside is drifting off my bare arms and neck and cheeks, and I keep running.

* * *

**Swimming**

You're all slippery and you won't look at me in the eyes. Every time I try to hold on to you it's like we're swimming and you keep getting away from me.

At school you walk by me in the hallways and sometimes you tug me after you. Sometimes you keep tugging me all the way outside and to under the bleachers and then you kiss me, and kiss me, like you're looking for something. When I look at you, it makes me think about the blur when I'm running in the dark and cars rush past me. I run more, like I can match up the you in front of me with the you I think about when I'm running. Like I am chasing your shadow when you're not even there.

I don't go near your house anymore; I run along the road east through the park and the cemetery and down Bellefontaine and along by your dad's hospital and past the country club and on the road where I can see the quarry and all the way past the three reservoirs.

You're in my head. _The quarry is so ugly, Britt, why do you go there?_ I can't remember if you said that or if I dreamed it. I just know that you're said the words to me, somewhere. I never answered you, because I figure you know why. It's not ugly, to me. Right now the bits of stone match the patches of ice on the water, and I like that.

I can smell leaves burning like it's November, but it's January, and I can't figure out where the smell is coming from. Sometimes I think it's you-that you smell different. Like you've come back from somewhere else, even though you have been here all the time. Haven't you?

* * *

**Dizzy**

I didn't stop even when you said those things to me. Instead I've taken the words with me while I run and they shake up like little flakes in a snow-globe and rain down in different orders.

_I don't want_ and _please_ and _I can't_ and _love you_ and _other boys_ and _please_ and _please_ and _don't touch_ and _me _and _you_ and _I_ and _love _and _be with. _

I run in your t-shirts until I can't smell you on them and then I bury them in a drawer. I think maybe your smell and mine are both in them and that makes me miss you less, for a minute.

At the weekend I drive out to Celina and leave my car and run in the State Park. I forget to eat breakfast and I run so fast that it feels like my feet aren't part of me anymore. I gasp in the smell of trees and water and hold onto the clenching in my thighs and I think about running between you and Artie, back and forth; the sun comes up and it makes me squint and I can see shapes in my vision and I feel dizzy and empty and I wonder if you're going to come back to me. When I stop I think I can hear the crush of my heart against my ribs and it makes me think about bonfires, and I don't know why. I speak out loud, like it'll bring you back. _Can you explain it, Santana?_

As I'm driving home I hear your words in the right order like they're settling at the bottom of the snow-globe again but it's worse, somehow. I want to run again even though I've just stopped.

* * *

**Orange**

I leave you in my bed to run on McKinley's track in August. I like the color of the track, and I know it's because it reminds me of you. So does the smell, like burning summer dirt and cheering and football.

You mumble into my pillow when I leave the bed and the squeeze inside me makes me feel like I am already running.

_Why are you leaving, Britt-Britt?_

I answer you with a kiss and tell you to go back to sleep. You don't sleep anywhere except my bed anymore.

At school I run clockwise around the oval again and again and kick my feet through the dust that comes up in little gasps around my sneakers. Then I run in the opposite direction so I can make the orange clouds bigger. I think about you sleeping under my quilt and how I'll kiss you, clammy with running, when I come back to you.


	3. Maybe

Where were you calling me from? Your voice was like fireworks, misfiring and then hitting every wrong beat on their way down. I could hear something behind you-or was it to the left?-and it made your words distort queerly, like shadows coming through a glass of water and bending in shapes I didn't recognize.

I thought it was a girl, another girl. For a minute. But then you sounded alone. Maybe I won't ever know; maybe I will. But you'll have to be the one to tell, won't you? And there's so much you don't tell. All your words line up like pearls at the bottom of a sea, out of their oysters, but drowned, like they don't want to be found.

I can't find my keys, Britt, I think. But keys sounded like breeze. That didn't make sense to me, but you sometimes don't make any kind of sense when you're drunk. I couldn't make your words fit with my ears, but I could hear the tequila, and I thought for a minute I could smell it in the air in my room, too. But that wasn't true-my room was empty, it was only me there, and all the space left behind that used to be filled up with your laugh and your words and your smell.

Sorry I called, you said at the end, and that was the only thing I was sure of. Your laugh was tinny and I thought again of the fireworks, set off at the wrong moment, broken, leaking the colors out in the wrong order, all wrong.

It's ok, Santana. Where are you?

I think you laughed again, but the other girl-noise was back, and I don't know. Maybe it was a sigh. The call cut out and I still thought maybe I could hear you in the silence left after.


End file.
